David Willetts: the brain of Tory Britain

His rise was swift, but he has never quite made it to the Conservative top table – testimony, say many, of his being too clever for his own good. With a new book out, could it be that his future lies in a more literary direction?

Politicians are called many names but very few ever stand accused of being an intellectual. The rule-proving exception is David Willetts, the shadow minister for universities and skills. For many years now, the man who looks like Bamber Gascoigne's younger brother has been known as Two Brains, the nickname awarded by the Guardian's Michael White for his unusual interest in social theories.

Not only does Willetts read books, which is not the recommended way to get ahead in politics, he writes them as well. None has threatened the bestsellers lists; even the most dedicated policy wonk could probably resist titles like Old Europe? Demographic Change and Pension Reform. But his latest book, The Pinch, looks likely to attract much wider attention.

Its subtitle is "How the baby boomers took their children's future and why they should give it back". That's just the sort of provocative statement beloved by publishers of popular non-fiction books, but in this case the author has a strong argument and a wealth of data to back it up.

Broadly, his thesis is that the spike in Britain's birth rate between 1945 and 1965 created a generation that prospered politically and economically through sheer weight of numbers. But deceived by the growth that accompanied their rise to power, they worked too little and spent too much, thereby leaving a huge debt burden and diminished prospects to the next generation.

The idea that the baby boomers have overindulged themselves is not new. But the most common versions of this syndrome have been political and psychological, describing a tale of identity and self-absorption neatly summed up in the label, the Me Generation.

Willetts takes a different approach, which is more economic and temporal. What he writes about might be called the Now Generation. The real fixation of the baby boomers has not been on themselves as individuals so much as life lived in the present. Hence, argues Willetts, the paradox of a much greater focus on rearing children, but a legacy for those children of university loans, high house prices, pension shortfalls, reduced social mobility and a massive national debt. "We may be better parents," writes Willetts, "than we are citizens."

Richard Reeves, the director of Demos, the independent thinktank, is impressed by the book. Reeves chaired the Progressive Conservatism panel, organised by Demos, in which Willetts took part, and thinks that he occupies the singular position of "the public intellectual as parliamentarian".

But there is an obvious tension between the two roles. The wealth of knowledge that Willetts has built up on issues like social mobility and welfare reform make him a valuable resource to David Cameron, but his more nuanced approach to policy presentation can fail to deliver political capital.

"It's like taking an elegant chess player and putting him on a racket ball court," says Reeves. "He's too subtle a thinker to make crude political claims. You can't imagine him, for example, saying Britain is broken. He's the guy who always says, 'It's more difficult than that.'"

Willetts is a prime beneficiary of the advantages that, he says, are no longer on offer to young people. He was born in 1956, right in the middle of the baby boom. Brought up in Birmingham in a middle-class family – his father was a glazier – he went to grammar school and then to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a first in PPE.

At Oxford, he met his wife, the figurative artist, Sarah Butterfield, and became a radical, free-market conservative, reading Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek. Starting out as Nigel Lawson's private researcher, he joined the Treasury monetary policy division and then Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit.

By the time he was 31, he was head of the Centre for Policy Studies, the Thatcher-founded, neoliberal think-tank. Two things were obvious at this stage: Willetts was a committed Thatcherite and he was destined to become a senior Conservative figure.

In the intervening years, both wisdoms have undergone some notable revision. Like many in the Tory party, Willetts has renounced his Thatcherism. In his case, as an early advocate of compassionate Conservatism, he could at least argue that he was ahead of the crowd. The conversion, he says, was a slow process triggered by becoming a parent – he has boy and a girl. "My personal definition of a Conservative," he has said, "is a free-marketeer with children."

He pleaded with Tories to "get back in touch with the poor" and demonstrated his determination by spending a night on a Birmingham council estate. That this foray into urban reality was deemed symbolic served mostly to show just how out of touch Conservatives, and Willetts among them, had become.

If the arrival of children prompted his rethink, the departure of power must have confirmed its necessity. The long rule of Labour has not been kind to Willetts's prospects, and the great political future that was once predicted now seems to lie behind him. He won his Havant seat in 1992, aged 36, and made early strides as first a whip, a minister in the Cabinet Office and then paymaster general. But the first snag arrived when he became caught up in the cash-for-questions scandal around Neil Hamilton and he was forced to resign.

While blessed with an eye for detail – he successfully worked on introducing spectacle vouchers – he lacks a nose for trouble. His next major mishap was supporting David Davis for the party leadership. His thinking, he later explained, was that it required a genuine right-winger to reposition the party towards the centre. "It was a kind of Nixon-goes-to-China argument," he said. The logic had its merits, not least because Davis was the favourite, but it had one major flaw: he'd backed the loser.

This was unfortunate, but politics, like sport, is about making your own luck and there is a feeling among many observers that Willetts has never quite got the hang of the game of politics, with all its shifting allegiances and playing to the gallery.

As shadow education secretary, he tried to apply a more empirical approach to the notoriously ideological education debate, but came unstuck when he made a speech in which he renounced grammar schools. In fact, he was only reiterating Conservative policy, but his comments caused a huge stir among the party faithful, for whom the issue carries a kind of sectarian religious significance. When the government restructured the education department, Cameron responded by promoting Michael Gove over Willetts, who was left with the downgraded shadow minister position.

The irony in this particular class struggle is that the grammar-school boy effectively fell victim to the public-school elite of the party for supporting comprehensive schools. Perhaps it's not entirely surprising that he is said to harbour what one admirer describes as a "slight chippiness towards the public- school boys".

To many, the grammar-school furore proved that Willetts was far cleverer than he needed to be. But there are those who believe that Willetts's intellectual reputation is overstated. Simon Heffer, the staunch Thatcherite commentator, made the point at the time of the schools controversy: "In a party of very stupid people, they all believe he's clever. But he's not an original thinker. He uses other people's ideas in a plausible and articulate manner."

In one sense, Heffer is right. Willetts's strength isn't necessarily originality – although he's not afraid to put forward new ideas – but the organisation of a wide range of research, across a number of disciplines, into a coherent thesis.

In this respect, he shares more than just a high hairline with the Canadian writer, Malcolm Gladwell. The Pinch draws on social history, actuarial science, child psychology, sociology and economics to make a series of counter­intuitive observations. For example, Willetts argues that the nuclear family is not a modern phenomenon, but a tradition in England dating back 800 years.

Among Willetts's supporters is David Goodhart, the editor of Prospect magazine, to which Willetts is a regular contributor: "I'm a huge fan," says Goodhart. "I think he's the most interesting thinker in British politics." Goodhart commends his breadth of reading and clarity of thought. He also speaks of the way that his intellectual concerns are always harnessed to strong common sense and interest in practical application.

But what Goodhart finds particularly appealing is perhaps the quality that has most held Willetts back as a politician: his willingness to move away from party politics when discussing ideas. "Sometimes," says Goodhart, "I find it hard to remember that he's a party politician."

Unfortunately for Willetts, a good many voters, not to mention party activists, share that view. Only the reckless would bet on Willetts making it into Cameron's cabinet, should the Conservatives win the election. But the Tories' loss could well turn out to be the reading public's gain.